By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Figuring out how many birds or bats might be harmed by a planned wind farm and how to minimize that harm is the realm of Keith Lott, wind energy biologist for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife (DOW).
“I provide developers with survey recommendations assessing impacts to wildlife,” said Lott, a speaker at the Wildlife Diversity Conference presented by the Division of Wildlife.

“Once we get the results of those studies we can interpret them and determine whether the site would pose an unacceptable level of risk to Ohio’s wildlife resources.”

More than 50 Ohio wind farm projects are in the works; proposals for six sites have already gone to the Ohio Power Siting Board (www.opsb.ohio.gov) which is the group that provides developers with a certificate and tells them they are allowed to build, Lott said.
The projects range in size from 27 turbines to 200.

According to the siting board the developer must provide results from environmental studies.

The Department of Natural Resources has created documents about what studies may be used for that purpose to assess what wildlife is using a proposed wind site.

They may be anything from breeding bird surveys to conducting mist netting, which is putting up very fine netting and capturing bats to determine what species of bats are using the site, to using radar which determines the passage rates of birds and how high they’re flying, Lott said.

“Each of those studies is assigned based upon where the project area is and what type of habitat is there,” he said.

The DOW does not have the resources to do the studies - the developer will hire a consulting firm for that.

“We will get those results, interpret them and make recommendations based upon the results of the studies,” Lott said.
Lott can then suggest ways to minimize and reduce the likelihood that birds, bats, anything else would potentially be impacted by a facility.

“We go with a variety of different mechanisms from reducing lighting around the facility to having specific ‘cut in speeds’ which is when the turbine starts to rotate,” Lott said. “Each of those things can be used to reduce mortality but it really depends on which species is being impacted as to which mechanism we use.”
All of the developers that have proposed sites for Ohio are going along with the recommendations that the division has provided, Lott said.

The development of agricultural fields as wind energy sites is usually encouraged, Lott said.

Typically those sites are not habitat for many species as opposed to a woodlot in which case the development would increase fragmentation and remove potential habitat.

Currently Lott is surveying over Lake Erie to select baseline information on waterfowl abundances. The DOW received a grant to conduct those studies.

“If someone was to propose a wind turbine facility within the Lake Erie area, we would be able to say this area has high bird abundance or this area has low bird abundance in an effort to have them site facilities in regions that have low likelihood of impacting pelagic birds.”

Previous information collected from Lake Erie was less than a mile from the shoreline whereas the best winds are further offshore.
Transects from this current study go out to the international line which is about 25 miles from the shoreline.